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Steve's Reviews > The Door Into Summer
The Door Into Summer
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by
** spoiler alert **
Ultimately creepy, and not in a good way. It's a time travel tale, and I'll forgive a lot for an entertaining time travel story. But "entertaining" and "time travel" are all it's got going for it. I haven't read a lot of Heinlein, but this didn't show me at all why he's got got so many fans.
The writing style is fine, but he goes wrong in a few key ways with the story. [SPOILERS] For one, he wrote the book in 1956, with most characters' natural time being 1970 and the rest of the action (reached cryogenically and returned from via time travel) being in 2000 and 2001. Both are full of technological, cultural, and historical differences Heinlein invented. These probably seemed cool in 1957 or 1960, but his 2000 here wouldn't have held up in 1985, let alone 2008.
Spoiling with age as badly as his inaccurate visions of change is his vision of something wholly unchanged over 50 years: a degree of sexism astonishing these days. Hell, I suspect his degree of sexism would have been startling even in the real 1970. It's not constant and overpowering; it's just striking.
Each of those would be flaws I wouldn't mind having to overlook for the sake of the time travel story, which is largely entertaining, but Heinlein completely undermines any satisfaction that could come from it by having the protagonist and narrator, Dan Davis, eagerly find a way (via the rampant cryogenics of imaginary 1970) to marry in 2000 the step-daughter of his business partner, a girl who, as a child called him "Uncle Danny."
He'd known her since she was a toddler or something (in 1970, she's nine and he's [always] thirty), and there's talk early in the book about how she had a crush on him and wanted to marry him when she grew up, but it's just some misplaced childhood crush and, of course, nothing he actually reciprocates. Supposedly. Ultimately, though, after all the time travel stuff (which you could totally separate pretty easily from this weirdness), during which he makes various occasional references to how great this kid is and how important she is to him, after he returns from 2000 (during which time he never met her as an adult) to 1970 and takes care of fun paradox stuff, he tells her that he's going to go into thirty-year cryostasis. (Again, though no one but he knows it's his 2nd time.) 30 years seems like forever to a young kid, and she's upset she won't see him again, and he tells her that in 1982, when she's 21, she could do "The Long Sleep" too and come out of it also in 2000. She asks, "If I do...will you marry me?" He replies, damn disturbingly, "Yes....That's what I want. That's why I'm doing this."
After they awake in 2000, they get married pretty much immediately. And then the book ends within a few pages.
So Heinlein's a freak and a perv. I don't care that much that this girl is physically 21 when they hook up. The "hero" never knew her as an adult, just as a young kid who called him "Uncle Danny," and it was based on that relationship that he decided he wanted to marry her. Also, the 21-year-old who opted for the cryogenics in 1982 apparently still has the precise same feelings as her nine-year-old self, which is similarly disturbing. Goddamn. Fricking. Creepy.
Throughout the book, the protagonist (and narrator) doesn't seem like a really great guy but sympathetic enough. If Heinlein's trying to blow the reader's mind by having him turn out to be not at all sympathetic after all that, I could see the point in that. But there's no indication that's what the author's up to or, indeed, that he sees anything wrong here. It seems instead that he's glad for Dan to have a happy ending. Parents of 1957, keep your children away from Robert Heinlein, please.
My default tendency is to react favorably to time travel fiction, so it's pretty striking to make that U-turn from amusement to revulsion there at the end and move this from the "OK" column into "Not OK. Not."
The writing style is fine, but he goes wrong in a few key ways with the story. [SPOILERS] For one, he wrote the book in 1956, with most characters' natural time being 1970 and the rest of the action (reached cryogenically and returned from via time travel) being in 2000 and 2001. Both are full of technological, cultural, and historical differences Heinlein invented. These probably seemed cool in 1957 or 1960, but his 2000 here wouldn't have held up in 1985, let alone 2008.
Spoiling with age as badly as his inaccurate visions of change is his vision of something wholly unchanged over 50 years: a degree of sexism astonishing these days. Hell, I suspect his degree of sexism would have been startling even in the real 1970. It's not constant and overpowering; it's just striking.
Each of those would be flaws I wouldn't mind having to overlook for the sake of the time travel story, which is largely entertaining, but Heinlein completely undermines any satisfaction that could come from it by having the protagonist and narrator, Dan Davis, eagerly find a way (via the rampant cryogenics of imaginary 1970) to marry in 2000 the step-daughter of his business partner, a girl who, as a child called him "Uncle Danny."
He'd known her since she was a toddler or something (in 1970, she's nine and he's [always] thirty), and there's talk early in the book about how she had a crush on him and wanted to marry him when she grew up, but it's just some misplaced childhood crush and, of course, nothing he actually reciprocates. Supposedly. Ultimately, though, after all the time travel stuff (which you could totally separate pretty easily from this weirdness), during which he makes various occasional references to how great this kid is and how important she is to him, after he returns from 2000 (during which time he never met her as an adult) to 1970 and takes care of fun paradox stuff, he tells her that he's going to go into thirty-year cryostasis. (Again, though no one but he knows it's his 2nd time.) 30 years seems like forever to a young kid, and she's upset she won't see him again, and he tells her that in 1982, when she's 21, she could do "The Long Sleep" too and come out of it also in 2000. She asks, "If I do...will you marry me?" He replies, damn disturbingly, "Yes....That's what I want. That's why I'm doing this."
After they awake in 2000, they get married pretty much immediately. And then the book ends within a few pages.
So Heinlein's a freak and a perv. I don't care that much that this girl is physically 21 when they hook up. The "hero" never knew her as an adult, just as a young kid who called him "Uncle Danny," and it was based on that relationship that he decided he wanted to marry her. Also, the 21-year-old who opted for the cryogenics in 1982 apparently still has the precise same feelings as her nine-year-old self, which is similarly disturbing. Goddamn. Fricking. Creepy.
Throughout the book, the protagonist (and narrator) doesn't seem like a really great guy but sympathetic enough. If Heinlein's trying to blow the reader's mind by having him turn out to be not at all sympathetic after all that, I could see the point in that. But there's no indication that's what the author's up to or, indeed, that he sees anything wrong here. It seems instead that he's glad for Dan to have a happy ending. Parents of 1957, keep your children away from Robert Heinlein, please.
My default tendency is to react favorably to time travel fiction, so it's pretty striking to make that U-turn from amusement to revulsion there at the end and move this from the "OK" column into "Not OK. Not."
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
March 21, 2008
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Finished Reading
March 22, 2008
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by
Wayne
(new)
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rated it 4 stars
Feb 24, 2009 07:09AM
It must've really bugged you that McLeod's assistant in "the Highlander" was a young girl that he rescused from the Nazis during WWII, raised her, and they became lovers when she reached adulthood (from the deleted scenes on the DVD).
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Weirdly, I've never seen Highlander, in fact. So I have been fortunate enough to have suffered no distress over that one.
So according to your review you also hate Back to the Future?
Daniel wrote: "So according to your review you also hate Back to the Future?"Uh, sure, dude, whatever you say. Those are totally both the exact same thing. Great insight.
Well you said you didn't like reading it because of the dated technology. Much like in Back to the Future when he goes to the two-thousands and rides a hoverboard. Or when a man from 1980's falls in love with. a woman from 1850's.
I agree that the whole Dan/Ricky thing became weird. It felt like Mr. Heinlein needed a hook at the end of the book and grabbed that one even though it was forced. His description of Ricky when Dan sees her in the Girl Scout camp creeped me out. It was unfortunate that he wrote that stuff in at the end, because up until then it felt like a normal niece/uncle relationship, with Dan doting on his beloved niece, but not in a creepy way.
(Facepalm) Dan was not really her uncle, and she was not his niece, so there's no need to get grossed out about family relations. Although I agree the passages where he thinks about her don't quite jibe with the way we think of this subject in 2013, it probably wasn't a big deal in 1956 (when girls married quite young all the time), and it makes even more sense if you know a little of the history of the writing of this book and who inspired the character of Ricky (i.e. his 3rd wife Virginia). Read the Wikipedia article on this book and then see if you think the same way about it.
Facepalm all you like, pal, but it was perfectly clear to me, at least, that they weren't biologically or legally uncle and niece, and that distinction doesn't save this from being creepy and wrong. Your rationalizations are themselves disturbing.
lol...well, thanks for the personal dig where none were called for. I guess I could retort that thou dost protest too much, but I'm better than that. :-)Again - different time, different attitudes. I agreed it was creepy - to us. Probably not that creepy in 1956. In any form of art appreciation it's important to consider works in the context of their time, to do otherwise is not fair to the work. You don't need to agree, but you could at least disagree with a civil tone and avoid personal allusions about people you don't know anything about.
The October 15 comment was so wrong-headed in so many different ways that I'm inclined to close the thread at this point, disappointed at the diminishing quality of these comments. Goodreads doesn't allow that, though, apparently. If a book review is public here, it's necessarily open to comments. What I can do, though, is delete individual comments, which will sort of allow me to close the thread in effect. I'm not going to delete any previous comments from this thread and not necessarily going to delete all new comments from it going forward, but it appears the comments that seem to be drawn to this thread are the sort of comments I'm likely to delete as soon as I see them.
It's possible you might have a reasonable and worthwhile comment to add here, and, of course, if it seems that way to me too, I'll be happy to let it stand.
Here, though, are a few things that are extremely likely to provoke me to delete your comment and block you (This is not a comprehensive list):
1. Starting a comment with "Facepalm."
2. Inane misuses of cliches from Shakespeare. (And I'll decide what counts as that, of course.)
3. Pompous lectures about civility and tone, even if you didn't start your first comment with "Facepalm."
4. Bizarre amounts of personal defensiveness in response to my having the same attitude toward your arguments in favor of the Dan/Ricky conclusion as I had in my review toward that conclusion itself.
5. Complaining about this particular (Oct 19) comment or the policy it describes.
I didn't feel like it was creepy because his romantic feelings for Ricky only occurred once he had done the first long sleep and had 6 months of introspection. He realized she was grown, probably married, and would be closer to his age. He became a bit jealous due to that thought. We got to see his progression of feelings even though he hadn't met her as am adult. Although the progression felt rushed, it was there.
"...a degree of sexism astonishing these days. Hell, I suspect his degree of sexism would have been startling even in the real 1970." Yes, it was. I was irritated even then.
Jan Priddy: Good!Mike Kohary: You seem to have the 1950's mixed up with the Dark Ages. Girls didn't get married at 12 back then, although sometimes they got married in high school. But not twelve. Remember how when Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin, it was a big scandal? And not just because she was his cousin.
And Steve: I agree that the relationship was creepy, and I think it was sad, too. Sad that the degree of sexism at the time kept even okay men from seeing women and girls as real people, a girl as a child who needs her childhood preserved. This book needed a one-star review.
